Culturing Phytoplankton

cranberry

cranberry

Active Member
People who are hyped on nutrition are hyped on phyto. Some people don't really care that much as long as their tank looks great. I'm a critter watcher. I have more pictures of the pods, fauna and critters in my tank than I do of the tanks themselves. I guarantee you, you will see better life if your tank if it is well fed.
What's your temperatures outside going to be like the summer?
The culture that crashed...
What was your starter culture?
How close to your tank was the culture.
Did you have any other cultures nearby?
Did you ever sterilize your containers when splitting the cultures?
Temp?
Air stone?
Did you use fertilizer?
 
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vince-1961

Guest
What was your starter culture? Magic Algae dish from Florida Aqua Farms
How close to your tank was the culture? On a shelf in the sump, with about 4" of the bottle in the water. (for temperature control as it was winter and the basement got cold enough overnight to kill a whole bottle sitting in a 5 gallon white bucket with strong light one time.)
Did you have any other cultures nearby? Since it was in the sump, I'm going to guess "yes", but not intentionally.
Did you ever sterilize your containers when splitting the cultures? Ah, well this is probably where I messed up. I would just pour half the bottle into the tank and then just refill it with tank water. At first, I started with sterilized water.
Temp? same as tank. see above.
Air stone? no stone, but was pumping air into the bottom to keep it stirred up.
Did you use fertilizer? Yes, the F/2 or whatever it's called.
Temperature outside is 90 or more- - in the shade during the day. 80 at night.
 
cranberry

cranberry

Active Member
Many cultures crash after a time because of culture vats that are not sterilized with bleach or something similar.
But the biggest boo boo would be using your tank water. Your filling the containers up with the critters you are hoping to feed. We even find rotifers in crashed cultures if they are in the same ROOM. They are actually not allowed in our phytoplanktom facility.
90 may be a little hot for most cultures.
 
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vince-1961

Guest
Very informative. Thanks.
Now on to the next dumb question......
here's the scenario....got several one liter bottles up and running, one of which is nice and dark green, meaning ready to use. Do I pour the whole bottle in the tank at once?
In other words, "How often do I pour the stuff into into the tank and how much do I pour in at a time?"
 
cranberry

cranberry

Active Member
How many days was the dark one culturing for?
When you put it in the fridge does it settle out? Do the majority of the cells go the bottom? The reason I ask is because if I were making my own cultures I would let them settle out, pour off as much of the fertilized water as I could, and then fill the bottle back up with new saltwater.
What do you have in your tank to feed?
 
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vince-1961

Guest
"What do I have in the tank to feed?" Well, that's kind of the point I was wondering about when I asked whether adding phytoplankton is even necessary. All of my hard corals died and are now turning purple with coraline algae. The goniopora died. One of the two gorgonians died. The pom pom died. Many recordias and all the zooanthids died.
So now all that is left are several recordias, some mushrooms (leather corals?), 2 frogspawns, a white-ish bubble looking coral the name of which escapes me at the moment, and I'm not sure what else without going down to the basement and looking at it. I do have a "refuge" area in the sump which is designed to grow pods and let them wander out to be eaten by two fish that feed off of them.
EDIT: just this weekend I went to the beach and collected about 100 nassarius snails as my clean up crew seems to have dwindled significantly and my giant hermit crab disappeared a few weeks ago. (I assume he's molting and will eventually show himself again. In the meantime, the sand turned brown without having him around to clean it.)
I would just post a picture, but I seem to have misplaced my camera.
 
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vince-1961

Guest
Is that the polite way of saying my tank looks all wrong?
It does to me and I don't know why...... well apart from the fact that most everything other than the fish died. Probably about $200-400 worth of little stuff that I had hoped would take root and grow large in time.
 
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lizardlady58

Guest
Just wondering. I am new at culturing nanocloropsis ocularis. I use two twenty gallon jugs, one 36 inch strip light and I use algae grow for fertilizer. It does well ...my question is how do you store this stuff? My rotifers can't consume it all and I have heard so much contradictory advice as to letting it sit at room temp or refridgerating it.
 
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lizardlady58

Guest
Oh goodness no, I split the algae up into plastic pop bottles! One thing I did learn about plastic pop bottles, (for our household anyway) the labels need to come off to identify the contents. Friends of ours stopped in awhile ago and took home a few pop bottles of what they thought were draught. They got quite a surprise when they tried to drink it! Anyway, at the moment I am storing the algae in a dark cool place.
 
cranberry

cranberry

Active Member
Oh I know about lovely phyto drinks. The kids know not to drink the Mountain Dew around here. That's Iso in the green bottle.

It needs to be refrigerated. If it didn't, I wouldn't have 2 extra refrigerators running in my garage.
Nanno is super tough, it can handle more than many of the others can. It won't die persa, at a few days room temp. But the biggest concern is, at room temps they are metabolizing like they normally would, using up all their nutritional stores. When you put them in a cold environment their metabolizism slows down.... and they are of more nutritional value.
But besides preserving their metabolism, your product will crash after some time at room temp. Metabolism produces waste, waste is never a good thing to accumulate in a closed environment. Take the lid off of that bottle and take a deep inhale of a container left at room temp for a week or two.

Something else which is SUPER important and will extend the life of your culture is to shake the bottles frequently. I shake mine Mon, Wed and Fri. The more you do it, the better it is. Even motile phyto will settle in the refrigerator and the cells will smother each other. And if I can find the time to shake my bottles... y'all ain't got no room to complain. LOL!!

How fast will your cells settle so that the top portion of the container water is clear?
The one on the left has been shaken. The one on the right has been left to settle. Can you get your culture to settle like the one on the right? Do you only feed your Rot cultures with this? Do you ever pour any in your DT?
 
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lizardlady58

Guest
That's funny! I think I will take your advice and refrigerate the phyto. So far it doesn't settle that much. The top of the bottles are usually slightly lighter then the bottoms but anyway, are you growing iso at a different salinity? I use .19 for my nanochloropsis, but I understand that iso needs higher salinities. I grew some iso awhile back when I got my first bottle of phytofeast and had okay luck with it but I am not sure how much was iso and how much was other assorted algaes. I would prefer to grow iso if it is true that it needs higher salinities since I would like to match it as closely as possible to my larvael tubs salinities. I am going to try my hand at raising baby clowns. I am looking forward to the challenge,
 
cranberry

cranberry

Active Member
Ya, use 1.021 with Iso. Great Phyto. There are lots of single cell starter cultures out there.
Home cultures don't settle out like ours because the cell density is so much higher. What kind of fertilizer are you using?
 
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lizardlady58

Guest
I will look into ordering some iso. I use algae grow. I keep the lights on 24/7, I believe this is okay?
 
L

lizardlady58

Guest
I am using agae grow. and the algae gets light twenty four seven
 
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